Phillies Lose to Braves, Lose Sellout Streak

It was a double whammy Monday night for the Phillies. Not only did they lose to the Braves 5-1, but they lost their consecutive sellout streak. With 41,665 in attendance, the streak stops at 257.

WORLEY DOESN’T LOOK RIGHT

-He’ll never complain about the pain, but it’s clear there is something off with Vance Worley. You have to wonder how much the bone chips in his right elbow are affecting him. Would it make sense to sit him out for the remainder of the season, just to play it safe? In just 3 2/3 innings, Worley walked three, struck out two and gave up four runs on six hits. Just an awful performance.

SHEETS SHUTS IT DOWN

-The revival of Ben Sheets is pretty cool. Was a big fan of his in Milwaukee when he was one of the most dominating pitchers in the NL for a short period of time. After countless arm injuries and two years out of the game, he is still throwing pretty hard and backing it up with good numbers. The Phillies could not figure out Sheets as allowed just six hits and one run over seven innings. It’s hard to tell if this will last, but for now his numbers are exceptional: 4-1, 1.41 ERA.

FREEDOMBROWN WATCH

–Domonic Brown finished the night 1-for-3 and was struck on the hand by a pitch. He did remain in the game, so the hand seems OK. His defense is still a bit off in left field as he took an awkward route to a double over his head and missed the cut off man another time. For now though, Charlie Manuel likes his eye and plate discipline. He’s now 6-for-21 with the Phillies so far this year. The power is not yet there for Brown, which is crucial for his full development. They need him to be a power hitter.

-His outfield mate John Mayberry Jr. accounted for the only run for the Phillies, homering to left field in the fourth inning. It was his ninth of the season. Could this be a second-half revival for Mayberry?

BAD SEASON

Amazingly depressing tweet from John Finger of CSNPhilly.com below. The score held:

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0 Comments

Andrew from Waldorf

August 6, 2012 at 9:53 pm

60 losses.

Changing my name to Speachless from Waldorf.

Not much to say but that the problems still are in the core of this line up.

One of the reasons that I always win in fantasy sports is I am not locked into my players and will dump anyone at any time. Ive noticed that other owners will drop players theat they didnt draft with ease but they refuse to give up on guys they drafted. Especially early. Its like they think they will look stupid. I just drop them and pick someone else up thats hot.

RAJ manages the Phillies like a bad fantasy manager.
His guys are untouchable.

But all the other guys he can disappear.

Also reminds me of Jerry Jones and Daniel Snyder in the NFL who manage their teams like fantasy squads.
It never works. And it wont work here.

His guys aren’t untouchable – they’re just untradeable. There’s a big difference. That’s why he should have just handed over Cliff Lee to Los Angeles. There’s no way Lee’s performance in 2013-2015 will be worth $29 million a season. When you factor in the 2016 buyout, that’s what the Phillies are on the hook for with that contract.

Watching this team now and knowing you’ve got your core group: Rollins Utley and Howard back next year, I really don’t see how they’ll be much better. There’s not much out there free agent wise to help where they need it- 3rd and OF.

Those chips floating around in Vanimal’s arm cannot feel good. Let him get his surgery now, the season is over as far as playoffs are concerned (wait is that Jim Mora I hear?). Bring up Cloud and try him out.

vanible should be ashut down NOW! go get his elbow cleaned out and come back in the spring fully ready to compete. i agree with AFW the core is now whats going to hold up the phils going forward. you can’t do much about howard at this point , so he’s gonna be hear next year. utley will be with us for one more year. his replacement is now at reading and will probably move to lehigh next year and be ready in 2014. rollins? he’s tradable. i don’t want to hear about his fangraphs and all that happy stuff. oh he’s got the 3rd best stats of all the shortstops blah blah. third best as compared to what? a league full of losey hitting shortstops? how much worse can a rookie be? take galvis. with j-bags starry stat being what they are how hard will it be for freddy to clome close? and he’s probably on the upside fielding wise so that pos. would be a wash and at what cost? castro at reading could put up the great numbers mayberry is producing! or maybe even better. trade hm too shitholz gone! mini mart! schieder by! DFA. we need bats and more speed. and scrappy players fransden is scrappy! perfect replacement for mini mart.

Dowder makes an excellent point….We shouild just dump Lee’s salary. He will NOT be worth his pay rate by any means until the end of his contract. We missed the opportunity when we failed to “sell his contract” to the Dodgers. Damn shame.

With Amaro, we are witnessing what a trigger-happy, egotistical and finance-foolish general manager can do to a team……bankrupt it talent-wise and cripple it financially. We all will be crying in our beer with the contracts of Howard, Lee and I believe that we overpaid for Hamels, as well.

In the off-season, we fans will be left picking our noses and scratching our heads. Meanwhile, they will have a tough time selling season tickets.

Ruben has to be a little more like the Braves and a little less like the Yankees. Yes we need and love the big contracts players. However the Braves have a knack especially when it comes to pitching to finding talent. My worry if Rube would of dumped Lee, after he gave up so many millions to play here( and so soon) it would have some sort of backlash. Other free agents would think twice before signing here. Remember when no one one really wanted to play in Philly? I think for the next 2 years this team is going to be in some sort of financial situation. After next year we loose Chase’s15 million a year contract. However we will be burden with Lee, Cole, Doc, Papelhead and Howard. Ruben has his work cut out for him to say the least. The logic we are a pitching team wont work with no offense and a bullpen that blows leads, to which we cant come back from.

The end of the sellout streak was inevitable and surprised that it didn’t ended earlier in the season when their playoff chances were gone.

No one, not even the writer, Pat Gallen mentioned Worley’s postgame comments that his stomach was upset before the game and not feeling well when he went out there on the mound. He said he told the manager he wanted to pitch for his team. As he self described, he pitched with “heart”. That may account for his ineffectiveness. He did pitched well in some of his previous starts but lacking consistency after his DL stint. I’m not sure as some of you are in your presumption that his floating chips in his arm is the problem. As mentioned before, he has given a quality start or two and his arm didn’t seem to be a problem then.

I rather wait without making a prejudgment on Worley and give him time to regain consistency with his command of pitches. By September, we can have a better picture of where Worley stand. The manager really has no alternative since Blanton was given away (salary dump) and needs Worley in the rotation provided there are no setbacks with him.

This is true Bruce but if he is hurt or hurting you have to look at shutting him down. After the sweep and after the trades of Shane and Pence it was unofficially officiall that the team conceded. I knew them the sell out streak would be snapped. It started with the Braves and ended with the Braves. The Braves are sure making us pay for eliminating them from the playoff’s last year. They do have a few guys in Lehigh Valley that make some starts, if they shut down Worley. Albeit the ones with MLB exp suck, but the option is there.

I agree with you on the Lee situation totally, and that people get spoiled easily. Although I truly was not on board the night we were all hearing about the second Lee acquisition. If you can find it, it’s in the old articles here somewhere. I think it was Chuck, myself and just a few others that were saying the signing didn’t make sense at the time. I was happy afterward though, I admit that. And I’m confident he has plenty left and will contribute for years to come.

I do however think that Amaro has a lot to learn about the financial aspect of running a team, planning for the future, and just business planning and goal setting in general. He is the steward of a sound baseball franchise, and though some would say he inherited the good part, I’d argue that he’s done some things well too. I’ll call him out for things I think are stupid like the Howard and Papelbon deals, but I would never call him or anyone else a dirtbag.

I’m glad the stupid sellout streak ended. I was tired of hearing about it and tired of going to games where a lot of people were only there because it was “something to do”. I’m not saying that I want a return to the days where only 15,000 people would show up at the Vet and I seriously doubt that will happen here. But it will be nice to be able to go to a game and sit in GOOD seats at cheaper prices (Stubhub for today’s and tomorrow’s games show some nice deals)..

Well… considering player salaries these days, management needs all the sellouts they can get to pay those hugh multi-year contracts. Let’s hope the team owner(s) are not pocketing the revenue for themselves. 😉

Couldn’t agree more. I mean, where’s your pride? If I made a throw like that in professional baseball I’d be working my tail off so it never happened again. Howard makes bad throws constantly. The one last night was EMBARRASSING! Plus he can’t hit or run. Nice way to spend 20 million dollars.